Key points:

Opponents believe decriminalisation puts more people at risk of sex trafficking

"I specialise in BDSM and hard-core fetish. So, BDSM is bondage, discipline and sadomasochism so basically anything and everything a little bit kinky," the 22-year-old says.

In an upstairs room, there is a mattress on the floor, with a decorative purple bedspread, purple filtered light and a small, regular looking ensuite.

This is where he keeps his "various tools of the trade".

"I've got various types of bondage equipment, including ropes, there's wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs, stuff that I can use to hog tie — that's where wrists and ankles are both bound together behind the back," he says.

Mr Schafer began by offering sexual services in exchange for classmates doing his homework.

"I had already been doing different types of opportunistic sex work, and when I moved to Brisbane I was struggling to find work and I was quite poor and I just decided one day on Grindr to just put Escort Services. My family know and are super duper supportive," Mr Schafer says.

As a teenager, Mr Schafer was sexually assaulted.

But he insists the sex industry has helped heal and empower him.

"I have the skills and capacity and the knowledge within myself to know they do not deserve access to my body just because they want it, that I am the person who decides whether or not they access it, and on what terms they are," Mr Schafer says.

Calls for every state, territory to decriminalise prostitution

However, he does feel disempowered by the laws governing sex work — particularly in Queensland — where if he does not work in a licensed brothel, he must work alone.

Mr Schafer is also a spokesman for Respect, a sex worker advocacy group in Queensland.

"For instance, private workers in Queensland cannot work together — so that would be classified as an illegal brothel," he says.

"That means that we cannot cost share, we cannot support each other, we can't be there for each other's safety. We are not really allowed to message other sex workers about our current location, or our activities, which is a safety strategy that has traditionally been used by sex workers for decades."

The Brisbane sex worker says there is limited help from police.

"I know plenty of workers who would never go see the police because of the reality that they would be likely to be policed," he says.

"There is no court-standard definition for premises, so that is up to the police discretion. Then there's also that police are actually allowed to entrap us so entrapment of sex workers is legal and does happen in Queensland."

Prostitutes in Queensland can hire a bodyguard, but Mr Schafer claims the criteria is too restrictive.

And there are other worries.

"Sex workers are not really able to get onto life insurance very often, they're not able to get onto income protection," Mr Schafer says.

"There's a lot of those sort of really small, day-to-day things that we don't have access to. There's also the social isolation aspect of things where because there is such a stigma against sex work, that it can be quite dangerous and scary to out yourself as a worker."

So Respect and the peak national sex worker organisation, the Scarlet Alliance, are calling on every state and territory to follow the example of New South Wales, which repealed laws against prostitution.

"To decriminalise the sex industry and to decriminalise sex work is the first step in lifting the cultural stigma against sex work. It's the first step in people viewing our work as being legitimate real work that matters," Mr Schafer says.

Fears decriminalisation would increase trafficking risk

But legitimacy is vehemently opposed by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA).

"You need to understand it as a holistic system, it doesn't mean there aren't a few people who it's worked well for or they feel it's worked for them," she says.

"We work with a lot of survivors — as they would like to call themselves — of prostitution, and obviously their experiences in prostitution are very different. They're ones of consistent abuse, both psychological and physical."

A Senate inquiry into modern slavery last year heard harrowing stories about sex trafficking, including one Victorian politician's account of a woman in his electorate forced to live in a wall cavity at a brothel.

Dr Tyler predicts there would be more victims of sex trafficking from South-East Asia if Australian laws were further relaxed.

"We do have testimony from the Australian Federal Police and New South Wales Police about trafficking and organised crime into brothels, particularly in NSW, and that that has been a problem that has intensified since decriminalisation, so there's certainly a recognition of that at the highest levels," she says.

But Mr Schafer again disputes that.

"In a state where it has been decriminalised, there are going to be more sex workers there because it's a state where they can work without having to worry about the interference of the law," he says.

Dr Tyler insists there is evidence of trafficking, but it is difficult to prosecute.

CATWA advocates the Swedish model, where sex workers cannot be prosecuted but those who buy their service or profit from it can be charged.

"All the evidence we have from Sweden is that street prostitution in particular went down, significantly, we're talking about a drop of two thirds in street prostitution," Dr Tyler says.

"And, exit programs are a really important part of that too, having properly funded programs to assist women to leave prosecution."

Amnesty International argues the Swedish model has not worked because it drives desperate women underground.

But Dr Tyler says Amnesty's position is internally contradictory.

"Actually, Amnesty suggests that it's bad because it's forcing women online and indoors, so you have this kind of internal contradiction about whether street prostitution is the problem or whether online indoor prostitution is the problem and it seems to move depending on it fitting the argument of the day," she says.

CATWA says Australian lawmakers have so far failed to protect women's rights.

"There's been an inquiry into trafficking or sex industry legislation in almost every state and territory in Australia in the last 10 years and it tends to get put in the too-hard basket after that because these are quite fractious debates," Dr Tyler says.

"I'm sure everyone will hear from the different sides in this program that it just then gets put in the too-hard basket and ultimately, if we're not going to be serious about law reform in this area, we're actually not serious about protecting women's rights."

A spokeswoman for Queensland Police Minister Mark Ryan said the Government had no plans to amend prostitution laws.